PASSOVER DESSERTS YOU WON'T HAVE TO PASS UP

Passover presents the home baker with the ultimate in culinary challenges.

The feast of unleavened bread restricts for eight days many of the ingredients most often used in creating some of our favorite desserts.

For example, what can replace flour and yeast, whipped toppings and frostings, confectioners' sugar and flavorings?

"Actually, it's not as complicated as people think," says Shirley Ludin, public relations director for the South County Jewish Federation in Boca Raton. "Many, many desserts can be made without flour and without using ingredients that are chometz (any food containing fermented grain products)."

Working within the dietary restrictions just requires creativity and ingenuity. And that extra effort can make dessert all the sweeter. By substituting margarine for butter and by using specialty cake, cookie and muffin mixes produced with finely textured matzo cake meal, the home baker can make some tempting Passover creations. There also are pudding mixes made with potato starch instead of cornstarch, and extracts made with synthetic alcohol which can help you in your holiday dessert planning.

At stores like The Kosher Mart in Boca Raton, the Sunrise Kosher Market in Sunrise, Oriole Kosher Inc. in Delray Beach and Everything's Kosher in Miami Beach, products such as toasted marshmallows, lady fingers, mixes for strawberry cake and fudge brownies, dessert gelatin, vanilla sugar and rum extract are available for the Passover cook.

Add your own special touches to already baked and prepared confections, and you have delicious Passover confections with a minimum of fuss.

In Ludin's home, Passover desserts often are fruit-based and biblically inspired. She recounts this bit of history that's not recalled during the Passover seder meal: During their wandering in the desert, the Hebrews recalled the fresh fruit and vegetables eaten in Egypt, and that their scouts found grapes, pomegranates and figs in the new land, "a land which floweth with milk and honey."

Rabbi Rachel Hertzman, rabbinical assistant for youth and education at Temple Kol Ami in Plantation, explains "It's customary to use fresh fruit, strawberries and raspberries at Passover because they represent the anticipation of spring and rebirth."

"But it's only a custom," she says. "The tradition doesn't tell us anything the same way it tells us to eat matzo. The idea at the time of Passover is renewal and rebirth. It's a spring festival so fruits and vegetables harvested in spring are what we choose."

The agricultural new year at Passover is a natural for Jews in subtropical South Florida. Here, with strawberries and oranges, limes and bananas, the choices are choicest. Ludin bakes meringue in a jelly roll pan and layers sections of fresh fruit across the cooled crust. She "doctors up" assorted mixes and serves the sweets with a variety of poached fruit -- hot and cold.

She also spears pieces of fruit and cake on skewers for kabobs and fondue and, for a change, she combines chocolate syrup, instant coffee and vanilla for a mocha sauce to be served on toasted day-old sponge cake.

But you should use extra care when choosing the ingredients to go into any Passover dessert, says Rabbi Yechezkel Zweig, administrative rabbinic coordinator with the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America in New York.

The organization, which certifies the kashruth (endorsements according to Jewish dietary laws) of more than 20,000 products, says that processed foods which have no chometz component still need certification. That means grain- free cream of tartar, for instance, would need the Orthodox Union's endorsement, and vanilla or almond extract would need to be made with kosher- for-Passover ethyl or synthetic alcohol.

In order to be exacting in the choice of Passover products, the Orthodox Union makes available to the 1.5 million American kosher consumers a holiday directory that is updated annually. The 80-page booklet is free. To receive a copy, send a self-addressed, stamped (90 cents postage) manila envelope to: Passover Directory, OU-Kashruth Division, 45 W. 36 Street, New York, N.Y. 10018.

Also available is a comprehensive paperback guide, Kosher Calories by Tziporah Spear (Genesis Publications, $9.95), which lists more than 10,000 brand-name products, their nutritional value and year-round kosher certifications.

And don't forget that when questions on kashruth or appropriate Passover food use arise, you can always check with your rabbi.

KOSHER GOODS PLENTIFUL

According to Spear, the second largest constituency of kosher consumers outside of the tri-state New York area lives here in Florida. That means that kosher-for-Passover food choices should be plentiful. Chain grocery stores as well as neighborhood supermarkets fill their shelves with specialty items.

For those inclined to leave the baking to someone else, kosher bakeries like Palmetto Bake Shop in Boca Raton will offer variations on the standard sponge cakes: chocolate and fruit jelly rolls; macaroon, nut and honey cakes; everything straight and plain or fancy and filled.

And for those eager to whip up some tasty Passover desserts in their own kitchens, the choices are just as varied. For you, Ludin offers a bit of encouragement.

"So many people are so intimidated by kashruth," she says. "But we no longer have limitations. There are so many things we no longer have to do without. You just have to be creative."